


Tides

by apinknightmare



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 18:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10341342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apinknightmare/pseuds/apinknightmare
Summary: Oliver and Felicity get stuck on an elevator. They work through some things.WARNING: *Very vague spoilers for episode 5x20 - I don't think reading this will ruin anything, but...just in case.*





	

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't spec. I just love character moments, and we don't get enough of them on the show, especially between these two. 
> 
> So this is that.

“Of course this would happen when the rest of the team is chasing down a lead in a different city,” Felicity says with a sigh. “When we get out of here, I’m designating a corner for an entertainment center.” She sits on the opposite side of the elevator, propped up against the wall. They’ve only been stuck an hour, but she’s restless. 

Oliver—surprisingly—enjoys the break.

Felicity’s hair is down, out of her normal ponytail. The ends curl up the way they do when she’s been twisting them around her finger, working herself out of a problem. 

“Water, some snacks…” she continues. “Maybe a game or two.” 

Oliver imagines the recruits stuck in here with nothing but time and a board game. “Some people might not play so well together if they got stuck in here.” 

“Like us?” Felicity’s words are tinged with a hint of resigned sadness. 

It’s a night they don’t talk about, the last time the two of them were stuck in the lair. An angry summer storm knocked out power for half of Star City. The generator failed, leaving Oliver and Felicity locked in for hours, until Curtis finally got them out. 

They took comfort in each other then, had sex on the cot in Oliver’s tiny room in the sub basement. He apologized for all the mistakes he’d made as he held Felicity in his arms. He’d expected things to go back to the way they were before his lies and secrets caught up with him. He’d wanted to reap the reward without putting in the effort to fix their shattered foundation.

Then came Billy, and Susan, and an emotional rift that seemed too wide to cross.

She’d left him—rightly so—because he hadn’t treated her like a partner, because he’d hidden things from her that he should’ve shared. 

Felicity’s doing that now. He sees it in the way she keeps to herself, rushes off for hours at a time with little explanation. He doesn’t blame her for keeping things from him, but now he knows how she felt when he did the same. It bristles, weighs heavily on him. He wants to share her burdens, wants to help her out of the mess she’s in, but she’s shouldering it all on her own and it shows. 

He understands all too well now how he’d made her feel with William. With the League of Assassins. With so many other things he’d kept to himself these past five years while Felicity was right beside him, wanting to be his port in the storm.

He always learns his lessons the hard way. 

“We probably shouldn’t make it _too_ fun in here,” he says, trying to change the subject with a lightness he doesn’t feel. 

Felicity nods. “We don’t want to start having unexplained elevator breakdowns so people can sneak in a game of Connect Four.” 

The image of Rene and Dinah huddled over a pile of checkers pulls a laugh out of him. 

Felicity stares. 

“It’s been awhile since I’ve heard you laugh.” Felicity looks down at her hands, which are twisted in her lap. “Not,” she continues quickly, “that you’ve had any reason to. With the kidnapping, and-”

She cringes at the slip, and Oliver does his best not to fall back into that dark place he lived for some of the longest days of his life, his sins plastered all over the walls of his cell. Innocent faces looking back at him every time he opened his eyes. Every time he closed them. 

“I’m sorry,” Felicity says quietly. “I didn’t mean to bring it up, I-”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Oliver takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his too-long hair. “Maybe…maybe the best way of dealing with it isn’t pretending it didn’t happen.”

His answer shocks her. It registers in her wide blue eyes for a second before she looks down, playing with a hangnail on her thumb. Oliver stares at her chipped polish. Her fingers are usually perfectly manicured, this is just another area where her stress shows. 

He wants to ask, but doesn’t want to push her. Doesn’t want her to shut him out. He knows she’ll open up when and if she’s ready, but that doesn’t make the wait any easier.

“You doing all right?” she asks tentatively. “You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping.”

Oliver laughs, a short, bitter thing. He can’t help himself. “I haven’t.”

Felicity’s haunted eyes meet his, full of concern. “Do you think about it?” she asks, then studiously returns to that damned hangnail. “When you close your eyes?” 

Her voice is very small, and he knows she’s not just asking about Prometheus. He’s not the only one in this elevator who’s dealing with ghosts. 

“Yes.” 

“Not sleeping catches up with you,” she admits. “A few days, and you feel like-”

“ _Months_ ,” he whispers. “A _year_.” 

Her gasp echoes through the small box they’re trapped in. She knows what he means without him having to say it. That’s their way. 

“February twenty-third,” he tells her. “That was my last good night.” 

Felicity presses her lips together, tears welling in her eyes. She remembers. She’d been too excited to sleep, counting down the hours till her physical therapy the following afternoon. They’d stayed up together into the tiny hours of the morning. Oliver massaged her legs, desperate for her to feel something, while Felicity confided in him about all the things she wanted to do when she got back the use of her legs. (“Climb a mountain. Okay…maybe a really big hill.” Dig her toes into the sand on their favorite beach in Bali. “Walk down the aisle to you on our wedding day.”)

“Me too,” she admits, and the sadness in her voice makes his heart ache. 

Surprised at her admission, he watches her from his side of the elevator. 

Felicity shrugs. “Maybe the best way of dealing with it isn’t pretending it didn’t happen.”

Oliver swallows, hard. And when he looks at her, he sees what he’s been avoiding looking at for a really long time, since he lost hope that they could ever be more than just partners in their mission again. Since she told him the door to a future between them was firmly closed. 

Oliver is uniquely suited to help Felicity navigate this life of difficult decisions, of the never-ending guilt that comes along with making them. A life full of living with the dark side of doing things for the greater good. He’d taken for granted how nice it was to come home at night and wrap his arms around someone who understood what the day had taken from him. How nice it was to have someone who wanted to help him get some of that back. 

But he didn’t just lose her. She’d lost him, too. 

He’d apologized before—on that night they’ve been pretending didn’t happen—but he never fully grasped just what his secrets and lies had cost _her_. 

“When we broke up,” he says, his voice scratchy as he looks into her eyes. “I lost everything because of my own bad decisions. What I lost I gave away when I chose to hide things from you. But those things…I took them from you. I’m sorry for leaving you alone when you needed me. For not being the…the partner that you’ve always been to me.” The stricken look on her face is too much, but he holds her gaze. “You can talk to me, you know? If you want to. You can still tell me about your day. I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t, or…shouldn’t.”

Silence stretches out between them as tears roll down her cheeks. There’s a hint of a smile behind them though, and for the first time since she took her ring off her finger, that rift doesn’t feel so insurmountable. 

Felicity picks up his discarded jacket from where it lay next to her thigh, and folds it gently in her lap. “C’mere,” she says.

His chest is full to bursting with hope he hasn’t felt in ages. “Felicity-”

“Come _here_.” she says firmly. “It doesn’t look like we’re getting out of here anytime soon. I’ll sleep if you sleep. I kinda know this method that puts you out like a light.” 

He smiles, his heart pounding against his ribcage. “You should lie down. You need it more than I do, and-”

“Oliver.” A soft smile lights up her gorgeous face. This isn’t up for debate.

He lowers himself to the floor and curls up on his side, his shoulder against her thigh, his head on her lap. Felicity slides her fingers through his hair, nails scraping his scalp the way he likes. It takes him back to the early days of their summer road trip. The first few nights of quiet had been rough on him. He wasn’t suited for peaceful rest, didn’t know how to function without the burden of a city weighing him down. He’d needed help, something to ease him into sleep. 

Felicity pulled him into her arms, rested his head on her breast, ran her fingers through his hair. She relaxed him into closing his eyes. 

“Remember that bungalow in Big Sur?” she says soothingly. “With the outdoor shower that had the cracked tile, and the kitchen cabinets that creaked so loudly they woke me up when you made coffee in the morning?” He nods. He could never forget. “When I can’t sleep, I think about that place, about that summer.” 

“You still…you think about that?” he asks. 

“Of course,” she says softly with a nervous little laugh. “Those are some of the best times of my life.” 

Still. 

After everything. 

“That bungalow had that hammock on the porch we fell asleep on while listening to the tide. I felt safe there in your arms, like…like no matter what happened, everything would be okay because we were together.” 

Her voice is wistful, and he hates himself for attaching any kind of sadness to those memories. Those were his _best_ days. 

“Felicity,” he says, not exactly sure what will follow. He doesn’t have the words to express just how sorry he is for everything. But words won’t make it right, and he’s going to make it right if it’s the last thing he does.

“So, sometimes when I can’t sleep, I think about that,” she continues, completely ignoring him. “I remember how good life can be. I close my eyes, and I drift.” 

Oliver almost feels the breeze against his face if he thinks hard enough about it. 

“You ruined the griddle learning how to make french toast,” she says with a laugh, even though her voice is growing sleepy. “Remember our walk on the beach, when that rambunctious golden retriever knocked you over as he ran for his ball?” 

He nods. He remembers everything.

She rocks him back and forth—just a little—as she reminisces. And Oliver feels safe, like everything’s going to be okay because they’re together.

He closes his eyes, and drifts.


End file.
